The Road to Monterey/Chapter 10
"I ONLY know that Don Roberto has killed a man, that they have brought his body wrapped in tentcloth and laid it near the olive press, under the trees. That is all I know."
Doña Carlota was not greatly moved by the event. Dead men had come in her way before, and men who had fallen by violence. She was less agitated in the relation of this news than over the prospect last night that her betrayal of the American's presence on the ranch might be discovered by her niece. She was keen enough to see that the agitation had passed to the other side of the hearth, so to speak. It was Helena's face that grew white, and set in little lines of pain, when this news of Don Roberto's exploit was related.
"You didn't hear them say who it was? when, where, it happened?" Helena inquired.
She sat as she had started from sleep at her aunt's summons to hear this news, the bedclothes flung aside, her hair showering on her shoulders, dread and anxiety staring from her eyes.
"It may be the one they came to find. It was of about that length—I saw it as they carried it by the window. I'll send Rosa with coffee"
"No. But, Auntie Carlota, ask them—find out who it was, why it was that Roberto"
"There! there is Don Abrahan calling me, roaring again like a bear. These men! what a trouble!"
Doña Carlota left hurriedly, the sound of Don Abrahan's voice swelling; as she opened Helena's chamber door.
"Doña Carlota, Doña Carlota!" the summons sounded. And fainter, as the door closed, as if he had turned his back: "Doña Carlota!" with impatient clapping of the hands.
Doña Carlota made no haste to appear before her kinsman and learn his pleasure. She stood a moment at Helena's door, a look of supreme satisfaction in her face, crossed the hall to the door opening into the patio and stood a little while looking at the tender morning sun in the leaves of the pepper tree.
"I was right, I was justified; my conscience is clear," she said. "Yes, Don Abrahan. I am here, I am here. I am coming as fast as my feet can carry me."
Helena hastened her toilet, oppressed by a dread that made her morning dark. Sleep had been long coming to her last night; she had lain planning and devising, her mind flooded by this breaking down of traditional submission. When sleep came, it had locked her fast, she had heard nothing of the coming and going when the body of the slain man was brought and laid beneath the olive trees. Had she slept while they hunted this trusting stranger and killed him at her very door?
The thought wrung her heart with poignant regret. It seemed equal to betrayal to offer a man sanctuary that she could not insure, a refuge that had become a trap. She had not looked deep enough into Doña Carlota's crafty eyes when she related this tragic intelligence; not deep enough to see that her purpose was only one of leading her young ward on to the betrayal of what hid in her heart. Now Doña Carlota knew; she knew better than Helena herself, or more than Helena would have owned, at least, if confronted with the demand by her own conscience.
Doña Carlota was back at Helena's door while she was still braiding her hair. This time with a summons from Don Abrahan that amounted to a command. As quickly as she could dress she was to attend the pleasure of Don Abrahan in the parlor. It must be something terrible, Doña Carlota said, now unmistakably alarmed. There was a look in Don Abrahan's face to make a woman's heart sink low.
Don Abrahan sat at a small table near the window, papers spread before him; Roberto waited at the door like a butler, ciosing it behind Helena sharply when she entered, shutting Doña Carlota out with summary rudeness. Don Abrahan rose, tall, gaunt, his roomy clothing loose upon his limbs. Helena stood in questioning hesitation, looking from Don Abrahan to his son. She seemed a stranger in her own house, these two had taken such authoritative control.
Don Abrahan turned his hand in slow, graceful motion to a chair, remaining standing in his punctilious way of deferential grace until she was seated. Roberto stood with his back to the door, his pistol at his side.
This house was not so pretentious as Don Abrahan's, there being nothing grand in its proportions at all, compared with the bright and beautiful homes which stand in that same valley today. It was a squat, flat building of gray adobe, severely simple, conforming in all particulars with the traditional plan of houses of the gentry in California of that period, following the older traditions of an older land. All rooms faced upon the patio, with doors admitting to it. In the front of the house there was the hall in the center, a room on either hand; in the wings the kitchen and sleeping rooms. The parlor in which this small party gathered this morning was not a large room. The morning sun did not brighten it, the house facing the west. Cedar beams across the ceiling, its dark draperies and somber furnishings, gave it a solemnity fitting to a solemn hour.
And this seemed to Helena a most solemn and portentous hour, indeed. Don Abrahan's face was grave, his demeanor judicially severe. Roberto, standing with arms folded on his breast, appeared like one waiting to enforce the judgment of some stern and pitiless court. They might have been officers of the Holy Inquisition, Helena thought, judged by the unsympathetic harshness of their faces, their fixed determination upon the business that lay in their hands.
Don Abrahan sat silent a little spell, drawing the written sheets of paper together before him, arranging them in a way that seemed to tell of his thoughts being detached from the action of his hands. Helena's heart was laboring as if it lay under a stone; her limbs trembled, her hands were cold. She did not know that Don Abrahan was a master of suspense; that every movement of his hand was calculated, every moment of silence gauged against the perturbation of her breast.
"There is a matter of gravity on our hands, Helena, my desired," Don Abrahan began, his measured words, his slowly lifted head, his deliberate, searching eyes, all adding to the weight of that cold stone which seemed pressing upon the warmth of her redundant heart. "If I have your permission, I will speak."
"Assuredly, Don Abrahan."
"We spoke last night, Helena, of your betrothal to my son."
Don Abrahan paused; his eyes sought the papers on the table, the first of which he lifted, seeming to read beneath.
"That is ended, Don Abrahan," Helena said, the tremor of her heart in her words.
"It is a heavy thing to speak of lightly, and in haste, as I said last night, my dear. Let us go back a little way, let us reconsider. Do you realize the affront, the humiliation, the insult, you are laying on my son, my house, by this hasty, capricious act?"
"There is neither insult nor humiliation intended, sir. I realize that I could not be happy with your son. That is the first consideration. I could not honor him, love him, or even respect him, as a woman should the man she marries."
Helena's spirit began to lift, the dread to ease its compression on her bosom. She looked Don Abrahan in the eyes, a flush enlivening her pale cheeks.
"In what way has my son forfeited his claim upon your respect, my love?"
"I told you last night."
"Rumors may easily grow into slanders between here and the capital," Don Abrahan said, in stern reproval. "If we are to credit all our suspicions, believe all we hear, accept every small circumstance as damning evidence, we will soon drive happiness and tranquillity out of our lives. Who of us is pure in all things? Who has not transgressed?"
"The source of my information cannot he impeached," Helena replied. "If you have called this solemn court to try me, Don Abrahan, you have exceeded any and all authority that I grant to your position and your years. I am free, I am in my right mind. I will not marry Roberto. You cannot force me to it, even with your valiant son guarding the door!"
"The small frivolities, the mild indiscretions—all this the world grants a man in his youth, Helena. It is different with a man."
"Let it pass; there will be many ready to accept the defense. As for me, I cannot, Don Abrahan."
"It is strange that you should come to this conclusion at this late hour, Helena. There was no word of it before the last day of the fiesta, no word"
"Two days after I left your house, Don Abrahan, letters came from my friends in the capital. But I doubt, even without the things revealed to me"
"Lies, slanders," said Don Abrahan, disdain in the swelling of his nostrils, the rocking of his head. "Have I not been young? It is the fashion to slander such."
"Your son has an able advocate, Don Abrahan," she said, smiling a bit scornfully. "Do we have to go on with the discussion, only to come to nothing in the end?"
"It is soon done," Don Abrahan declared with sudden sternness, rising to his feet. "My son stands ready to forget the past, out of his great and honorable love for you, to accept you with all the taint of suspicion"
"Don Abrahan! Don Abrahan!"
Helena sprang up, shocked, outraged. It seemed as if forbearance had broken with his words, that she would fly at him and tear out his tongue.
"He is generous enough, in the light of his great affection," Don Abrahan continued, hard in his tone, inflexible of purpose, "to close his eyes upon what would appear sufficient evidence to another, a less sophisticated man, and take you to his arms as his wife."
"The rake, the libertine!" she denounced Roberto, turning on him furiously. "Oh, you have no words of your own, you coward!"
"Silence!" Don Abrahan commanded. "He is under my interdiction, I speak for both. He is too generous to believe your intrigue with an inferior amounts to absolute guilt"
"Intrigue! you viper!"
"More as an escapade of adventurous youth, a thing to be censured, but forgiven."
"Generous gentleman!" she mocked. "And if I refuse to marry him, the penalty will be publicity, disgrace."
"No. A gentleman learns early in life when to keep silent," Don Abrahan returned. "You will reconsider your hasty words?"
"No!"
"You will think slowly, and speak slower. My son forgives the escapade of the oak tree, he forgives"
"Forgives! What absolution can he show for his own crimes?"
"He will forget what has passed, he will accept this restored compact as if you never had broken it by word or deed."
"How magnificent!"
"Do you yield?"
"No, Don Abrahan, I do not yield. There is no act of purgation, there is no fire of penance, that can cleanse him in my sight. To add to his crimes against women, it is said he killed a man last night. Who was it? Why was it done, here at my very door?"
"We are coming to that," Don Abrahan said.
He motioned her to her chair again, an invitation that passed unheeded. Seeing that she did not sit, he remained standing, lifting the papers from the table.
"It becomes necessary to tell you now what I have known these three days," Don Abrahan said. "The insolent aggressions of the Americans have driven our patient nation to resent them at last. War has been declared; battles have been fought on the Rio Grande. The triumphant Mexican army is sweeping forward to Washington. The man whom my son challenged in the road last night was a spy, carrying intelligence to spies. This correspondence before me was taken from him. Part of it was addressed to you."
Don Abrahan held up the written sheets, half a dozen or so in number. Helena put out her hand quickly, more in appeal than demand. Don Abrahan pressed the correspondence against his breast, denying her, lifting a checking hand. His face was forbidding, his accusing voice was cold.
"I have suspected Toberman a long time of plotting with the Americans and traitors in the north, but I lacked absolute proof until this day. It was beyond the limit of reason to include you, Helena."
Helena was not thinking of herself that moment; she was not crushed and confounded as her silence might be misunderstood. Her heart was beating fast, the warm blood was surging into her brain, quickening it to all the alert resourcefulness that was her heritage. Toberman had escaped, Toberman was safe, thank God! That was her thought, that was her exultation. Toberman was riding free. For herself and her peril, she had no thought.
"Perilous as your situation is, Helena," Don Abrahan said, "there is a door open to your salvation. You are young, you are under the influence of this man who has had your affairs in his hands since your father's death. He has misled you, he has brought you to this unwittingly, he"
"No, Don Abrahan," she denied, lifting her head proudly.
There was something in her voice, the ring of it, the proud defiance, that started Roberto out of his pose before the door. His folded arms fell to his sides, his fingers shaped as if to snatch a weapon. He moved a step toward her, his eyes distended in astonishment of the spirit revealed.
"I offer you this door," Don Abrahan said, unheeding her defiance. "I trust in my heart you will accept the exit from this most grave situation. Let this compact between you and my son continue, let us proceed at once to the priest and celebrate the marriage. My son has begged me to offer you this out of the manly love he bears you, Helena, and from no other consideration. Accept, and you will be relieved of this taint of treason. It will be an easy matter in such case to place the burden of guilt where it belongs, on the head of the traitor who involved you in this, innocently, we"
"Roberto, forgive me!" Helena begged, turning to the young man impulsively, a light in her eyes that he never had seen before. "I have misjudged you. You must have a true, an honorable affection for me to offer me this."
"May God judge between us!" said Roberto, with such feeling that his words trembled on his lips.
"There is something in you better than I knew," she confessed, the honesty of her nature not permitting the covering of one little spark of gratitude. "I thought all the time you were anxious only to have my money and my lands, but this—but this"
"The lands? curse them! The gold? sink it in hell!" Roberto said, flinging his arms wide, his head thrown back in his dramatic fervor.
"Forgive me if I have wronged you by word or thought, Roberto. There is much in you that is manly, much, I am sure, that is good. I owe you the confession of that much. But the compact cannot be renewed. We stand parted, never to unite. I would not buy my life with the betrayal of a friend."
"Think" Roberto began to plead.
"What a cowardly thing it would be," she seemed to conclude for him, but with a far different thought.
"If you refuse, it means the loss of your estate, degradation, imprisonment, perhaps death," Don Abrahan warned.
"Let it be so, then. I do refuse."
"What is this man, this alien who plays citizen for the purpose of introducing the enemy into this country, to you?" Roberto asked, perplexed, baffled, not able to understand. "Let him bear the blame, as he deserves to bear it. Nobody will believe you guilty."
"But I am guilty," she said, proud in the confession. "I have prayed for this war, I have prayed for the day when the United States army would march into this land"
"Silence!" Don Abrahan commanded, in stern, loud voice.
"The cruelties and injustices, the oppression of the strong, the misery of the poor—all this would come to an end, all of it will come to an end, when the United States army marches here!"
"Helena Sprague, as a magistrate of the republic I arrest you on the charge of treason," Don Abrahan solemnly declared. "I seize your lands and properties, in the name of the republic; I lay hold upon your cattle, your goods, your money, your effects, in the name of the republic. Such as spurn mercy when it is offered, must burn in the fire of justice."
"Take them, then, and my life, if the republic wants it!" she said. She turned to Roberto, who stood by torn between loyalty to his country and love for its betrayer. "Toberman—is he gone, is he safe?" she asked.
"Toberman is under arrest, safely kept," Don Abrahan answered her. "I have sent to the pueblo for the military. Tomorrow Toberman will be shot as a spy."